Customer is always right? Right? Not in my book. And certainly not in AirTran’s.

The Consumerist ran a story yesterday about AirTran removing a screaming toddler with her parents off the airplane. Apparently these parents could not control their kid who was screaming and violently behaving towards them.

AirTran spokeswoman Judy Graham-Weaver said, ” [The toddler, a three year old named Elly] was climbing under the seat and hitting the parents and wouldn’t get in her seat.”

Even though this was the fault of the parents, AirTran credited $595.80, the cost of the three tickets, and flew the family home the next day.

Isn’t that nice? Anyway …

This is a move that not every business owner is confident enough to make because of the famous line “customer is always right”. We try to satisfy everyone, don’t we? Well, sometimes the customer is not right and this scenario with AirTran proved it.

They did the right thing. If a parent can not control their child, others should not suffer from it. Why let one customer create a negative experience for 120 of your other customers. Do you think those other 120 on the plane were glad the kid was gone? I think so. Here is the response this story got from “Digger community”.

“Man, I hope this becomes standard business practice!”

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“Note to parents: If your children do not respect you or fear you enough to STFU in a situation like this; you are doing something very wrong.

This needs to become the standard policy for airlines, restaurants and any other public setting where a screaming kid makes life miserable for others. It isn’t the child it is the horrible parents and they need to be punished.”

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“What amazes me is how the parents acted like they were such victims here. (I saw the CNN.com video.) How they can think that delaying a flight 15 minutes wasn’t *by itself* enough of a problem to get them thrown off is amazing to me. If there were 100 people on that plane, they wasted 25 collective hours of everyone else’s life before they even got shown the exit, and they think *they’ve* been inconvenienced!?”

The above response shows that … majority of people are considerate of others and they do feel that sometimes others need a “break”, BUT when it comes to disrupting their own schedules or experiences for which they pay … they do appreciate a company that will stand up and do the right thing.

In my eyes, AirTran made the right decision that not only made the lives of those 120 passengers better but also improved the image of AirTran. Positive PR in my opinion.